


A Day to Mourn

by Nikostratos



Category: D&D - Fandom, DnD - Fandom, Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Eberron
Genre: Fantasy, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:07:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24021052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nikostratos/pseuds/Nikostratos
Summary: This is the first part of what will be a three-part short story. The setting is in the plane of Eberron for Dungeons and Dragons. Most of the characters depicted will be homebrew as well as is my interpretation of some elements of Eberron's established lore. I do my best to remain faithful to any pre-existing lore, but I'm sure I'll probably have gotten some things wrong here or there. This will be mostly written so that the reader shouldn't need too much preexisting knowledge of Eberron itself. I hope you enjoy!
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	A Day to Mourn

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first part of what will be a three-part short story. The setting is in the plane of Eberron for Dungeons and Dragons. Most of the characters depicted will be homebrew as well as is my interpretation of some elements of Eberron's established lore. I do my best to remain faithful to any pre-existing lore, but I'm sure I'll probably have gotten some things wrong here or there. This will be mostly written so that the reader shouldn't need too much preexisting knowledge of Eberron itself. I hope you enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vencarlo d'Cannith observes the turning point of a war one hundred years in the going.

A Day to Mourn

996 years after King Galifar III founded a continent-spanning empire and a mere 104 after that kingdom had split into fifths in an ongoing and bloody civil war, House Cannith Inquisitive, Seer Vencarlo d’Cannith strolled down the corridors of a Cannith enclave hundreds of feet above the besieged city of Metrol, capital of Cyre. The walls and finery of the near palatial compound rumbled gently in response to some distant aggression from the Karrnathi army outside the city walls. Collected, Vencarlo approached the solitary figure standing at a window overlooking the rolling hills surrounding the city. His mentee, Neophyte Curlot Montanye, followed just far enough behind as to show the proper deference. 

Archseer Isti d’Cannith turned her gaze from out the window as he approached and Vencarlo gave a respectful nod of his head to her. Curlot’s nod was slightly deeper as was appropriate for his rank. Theirs was not an order that favored outward or public shows of obeisance, even within House Cannith outsiders would struggle to differentiate an Eye from an Archseer based on their interactions. None however, would fail to recognize their mark. 

Isti spoke first, her voice friendly. “Looking for me? Or come to see the spectacle?” 

“I felt the Karrnathi resuming their barrage and wanted to see. Plus, this window usually has the best company.” Vencarlo responds as he stepped beside her, his tone equally friendly, but respectful. His harsh, but clipped accent marked him as Karrnathi, same as those in the army outside the city. Hers was the non-rhotic accent of the Brelish. Neither were natives of the country whose capital they were currently standing in. 

Isti was dressed in the typical garb of a Cannith Inquisitive. Black demisilk coat and breeches along with well-fitted leather riding boots. The darkened, interlinking metal plates of her second-skin armor peeked out from the sleeves of her coat and above her collar. It went as far up as beneath her chin, cradling her skull like some playwright with a green-eyed prop. As was a common quirk for both her and many other Inqusitives, her gauntlets were off and tucked into the pockets of her coat, revealing the tattoo of a mechanical eye on her right hand. She raised a spyglass, an outwardly simple looking thing of polished devilwood and iron, to her eyes and the armor hampered her not at all. 

Vencarlo took in the view out the window as well. This well decorated but thin glass partition was all that separated himself and Isti from a drop of near five hundred feet to the well-kept cobblestones of the Maker’s Quarter below. Despite the war quite literally right outside their walls the citizens of Metrol, little more than colorful ants from this perspective, carried on with their business with little urgency. Meandering down the high traffic boulevards, many would be artisans, House Cannith licensed artificers and tinkerers, forge smiths, and aspiring alchemists. The rest were most likely looking for quality goods; pots, tools, sunlight rods, and alchemical light globes. They might be able to buy them elsewhere in the city, but the quality would be nowhere near as assured. Rising out the center of the quarter towered a single five hundred foot tall pedestal of stone, one of the seven awe-inspiring Rising Towers of Metrol that previously held the city-spanning Palaces of Vermishard. It now acted as a plinth bearing the sprawling compounds of House Cannith’s laboratories and offices far above the city below them. Atop this tower was the greatest concentration of Cannith personnel and engineers outside of their base in Making, another Cyran city a third the breadth of the country to the South. Legally, House Cannith did not and could not own the land atop the tower, but Old Galifar’s Korth edicts were an old and fading law. 

Down at the base of the tower a ready-made platoon of warforged was led from the gaping maw of one of House Cannith’s creation forges. The lights of the forge were seldom dim these days and the flow of soldiers out of its maw was steady. The House of Making and Artifice produced these soldiers for each of the five nations, but Cyre was by far their greatest customer. Sentient beings of wood and metal, they would follow the orders of whatever parent nation purchased them. These ones, minds as blank as a toddler were much more guided than marched straight to the walls, their normal several months of training were a rarity at this stage in the war. 

Past Metrol’s once seamless wall the Karrnathi army had once again situated themselves among the outlying hills. Their black uniforms stained the once green plains like stubborn soot on a fireplace. From this height atop Cannith’s once unmarked tower, even their newly made camp was visible. Behind the hills closest to the city hundreds of tents pockmarked the once scenic landscape of Cyre in clean lines orderly enough to please even Vencarlo’s own desire for neatness. The legions of Karrnath were forming themselves within their camp, squads and platoons receiving their orders. Outside of it, already formed in shuddering ranks were several thousand undead, waiting for the unspoken command to move forward. Slightly closer, on the tops of crater-strewn hills lay the source of the distant impacts Vencarlo had felt. Karrnathi siege engines, a respectable mix that from glancing over it, seemed to be mostly trebuchet. 

Puzzled, Vencarlo furrowed his brow. He was over thirty, but his eyes couldn’t already be failing him. He was panning through the distant outlines of the siege engines again when an arcing flash of lightning gave it away. A siege staff, part of the reason he had sought out this perch. An entire length of Karrnathi greatpine stripped of its branches and ensconced in evocation runes and careful script. The lightning flew the length of the distance to the city before glancing off just before the city walls, like an arrow pinging off an adamantine shield. Interrupted but not cut short, the lightning flashed over the city until it struck a House Lyrandar airship floating lazily in its berth in the tower just to the West. The lightning splintered the unreinforced wooden hull of the airship like paper, and its pieces rained down to the city below like an apocalyptic hail. The reverberating crack of thunder came immediately after, shaking the walls around them. Vencarlo winced visibly, looking away from the flaming wreckage crashing down to the base of the skydock. He craned his eyes towards the segment of wall where the lightning had nearly struck. He was about to speak when Curlot spoke first.

“I don’t know who to be impressed with more after that exchange. All the artfulness of drunken fencers.” Curlot wisecracked, a grin turning up the corner of one side of his lips. Vencarlo turned to the Neophyte, making sure his disappointed frown was visible to his understudy. Curlot was strange for an Inquisitive, even a prospective one. As a native of Aundair he had a strong penchant for the dramatic, not the least bit encapsulated by his hair that he alchemically treated weekly to give a golden luster. 

“Let’s see you imitate anything other than a gilded archery butt in their shoes, Neophyte Montanye” Isti said coolly. With a full Eye the Archseer might have been more serious, but for Montanye and most other Neophytes she always seemed to have a soft spot. 

“Are my eyes failing me,” Vencarlo interjected before Curlot could compose a verbal riposte, “or was that lightning turned aside by a single mage?” He gestured down to the segment of wall the Karrnathi siege stave had just attempted to lob the fires of heaven upon. Though it was distant from here, Vencarlo was certain he could discern a solitary person wearing distinct billowing green garb. 

“Your thrice-damned eyes are fine, Vencarlo. Nine Gods, with how you whinge I fully expect to see you taking a magnifying glass to a mirror. Carefully sifting through each strand of hair frantically searching for some speck of gray that’s still a score off.” She lowered her spyglass and mimed picking through the air in front of her, like a primate looking desperately for its last meal on the back of some other, more patient primate. 

“That is blatant untruth,” Vencarlo said, pulling a lock of his black hair back from behind his ear to where he could see it. Was it lighter than it was yesterday? Disquieted, he tucked the hair back with the rest of it, out of the way should he need to don the helmet folded and compressed neatly into its slot in his black coat. “Who do the Cyrans still have on hand capable of such a feat? I read a report not two days back that they sent the entirety of their force capable of so much as making a spark out to harry that retreating Karrnathi force with Norr.”

“You’re correct,” Isti said, raising the looking glass to peer at the wall. 

The Karrnathi siege staves simultaneously shot out a volley of violet balls of fire. A dozen of them, each at least the size of a horse. They arced their slow, but inexorable traversal of the landscape between sieging force and city, aimed to fall upon the head of that lone figure in green robes atop the wall. As they approached each was slapped from the sky by some unseen force like a buzzing insect. A great shower of dirt erupted higher than the wall itself from where the eldritch fire had crashed to the ground. 

Isti let out a low whistle as she lowered the looking glass again several seconds later. “But it appears Queen Dannel takes this second army’s appearance quite seriously. That down there is her court wizard, personal advisor in all things arcane and Master of the 8th Circle, Leontollo Irawyth.”

“Master of the 8th Circle,” Curlot scoffed mockingly. “Wizards are always such pretentious assholes.”

“Her own court mage?” Vencarlo said, incredulous. “Is our Cyran patron’s calm facade finally cracking then?”

“Past cracked and closer to shattered, I'd say. She’s approaching breeches-staining-levels now if her pet spark thrower is out there.” Isti crossed her arms in front of her, spyglass in one hand. She smirked, “Not so comfortable now without Norr here to shelter behind.”

“Where is that damned colossus anyways,” Curlot asked from behind them. “They recalled it a week ago.”

As if naming it had summoned it forth, out the window, hundreds of feet to the ground and outside the gates of the city the colossus rounded the city wall with prodigious, thundering steps. The greenish waters of the River Melandor partially bisected the city, its waters allowing for anything from a single-masted sailing yacht to a four-masted galleon to reach the safety of Starmantle bay without their hulls so much as nearing the bottom. These deep waters splashed as high as the titanic warforged’s shins as it waded through them. 

Nearly three hundred feet tall the warforged was the pinnacle of House Cannith’s creation. As warforged were built larger and larger, it was quickly discovered that although they remained sentient, their mental capacity shrank as their forms grew. The typical warforged had the capability to be as smart as a collegium scholar, though like the humans who designed them, most were of more typical intelligence. The house-sized giants that guarded the entrance to the creation forges and lifts to House Cannith’s tower were about as smart as a golem and lacked the soul of their smaller counterparts. The ambulatory monolith that now stepped towards the terrified army of Karrnath was almost entirely mindless. It required a crew that operated within its hollow structure to instruct its every action. No less than three dragonmarked heirs, one each from House Cannith, Lyrandar, and Orien were necessary to commune with the colossus and direct its mind and weaponry to their desired outcome. 

Squinting his eyes, Vencarlo could barely make out the weapon it clutched in one of its hands from this distance, an iron-tipped log of wood that would be more fit as a battering ram than a projectile. In the three-fingered grip of that monstrosity of his own house’s creation it looked closer to a dart. Seeing him struggling to see, Isti handed over her looking glass for him to get a better look. Through the metal alloy of his second-skin gauntlets Vencarlo could feel the light warmth emanating from the spyglass like it was against his naked skin. Raising it to see, the distance of multiple miles now seemed little more than several hundred yards. Vencarlo shifted the glass to where he could see the Karrnathi siege staves set up on an outlying hill. The hilltop was rapidly becoming devoid of its crews as they fled their positions. A lone siege engineer held their position amongst the terrified chaos. Laying their hand on their stave and desperately raising their arm towards the colossus, the tree trunk length of staff charged with power. Swirling energies spiraled down the length of cannon, coalescing in a pure white bar of fire and light that streaked the length of the distance to the colossus. 

Vencarlo pulled down the spyglass, rubbing his eyes and blinking away the after-image the light had burned in. A muffled ‘whoomph’ was followed by the distant clatter of stones crumbling. Vencarlo turned back to the window, keen to witness how the behemoth would respond. Norr was straightening back up from doubling over, stepping back forward. He raised his house-sized foot from the entire section of city wall he had leveled carelessly upon being struck. A section of his outer carapace on his lower abdomen had been melted to near slag and dripped clumps of molten metal, but had withstood the blow. His response to the attack was immediate and unstoppable. Raising one of his battering rams he hurled the weapon at the staff that had struck him. After leaving the titan’s hand it took the dart seven seconds to cross the full breadth of the distance between the colossus and its target. 

Vencarlo lifted the spyglass, examining the results of Norr's uncanny accuracy. The already crater-strewn section of hillside where the staff had been was now devoid of any scrambling. Splinters of wood the size of doors were scattered everywhere, and of the remains of that lone siege engineer and their staff, nothing could be seen. The colossus would rarely go out onto a field of battle unsupported, but with the threat of the magical artillery clearly witnessed it closed in on the emptying hillsides. Great gouts of yellow flame shot from its hands, and dozens of spear sized bolts of magic flew from the ballistae built into carefully made hatches within its superstructure. 

“Sovereign Host as my witness,” Curlot said, breaking the awed silence that had fallen over them. “If that thing was bearing down on me I’d slit my own throat. Easier that way.” 

“You will do no such thing,” Isti said, turning away from the window and one of the greatest demonstrations of the word ‘destruction’ ever displayed. “If by some gods forsaken twist of fate one of those things turns or goes down it’ll be one of us,” she punctuated this last word by raising her right hand in a clenched fist and pointing to the geared eye tattoo on the back of her palm, “that’ll have the job of dealing with it.”

The Neophyte looked down at his own hand, the olive skin of his ungloved hand bore no mark upon it yet. “Of course Archseer, I misspoke.” 

The distant rumblings of destruction had tapered off and as the trio looked back out the window, Norr’s form was approaching the city wall again. Beyond it the siege equipment had been scoured from the nearby hillsides. The trebuchets and siege staves that hadn’t been destroyed entirely by the colossus’s own hand were now collapsing under their own weight, their smoldering beams unable to support them any longer. Behind them the Karrnathi army was in a full rout. They had besieged the city on a gamble that they could seize the Queen, and with her the country, before the colossus could return. Norr had only been in existence for three weeks, but already its presence shaped the face of war itself.

A sudden, but unshakable sense of strange nausea crashed against Vencarlo like a physical force. His sense of direction was utterly lost. A howling scream filled the space between his ears. His bones, his skin, all of his being quivered to it, vibrating like a struck tuning fork hit again and again. An endless weight was pushing on his mind, as if to send his body one way and his soul the other. Against this assault there was no holding on, no resisting. He tumbled along to the force of it as his consciousness faded to a pinprick of light, buried in the depths of darkness. He didn’t know how long it went on like that, but when Vencarlo regained his sense of self he was facedown on the floor right where he had been standing. He felt like a drowned man just coming back to the surface of the water after being dragged down by a whirlpool. He looked around, trying to remember where he was, by the gods it was difficult to even remember who he was. Isti was moaning and pushing herself back to her feet as well and Curlot was slumped against the wall of the hallway, unconscious. He was rising to his feet when actual nausea took hold of his stomach like a crushing fist. He retched on the floor, unable to control it. 

When he heard the bellowing roar Vencarlo thought it was about to happen again. He reflexively braced for whatever the hells that had been to happen again when he realized that this roar was in fact very real, and was coming from outside. Isti was on her knees, rubbing her head with both hands when they both realized what the noise was. They locked eyes and scrambled to their feet to look out the window again. 

Out the window, hundreds of feet to the ground and just outside the gates of the city the colossus gripped its head between both hands. Face to the sky the titan screamed. A single long scream that even from this distance upon their tower shook the window within its frame. An echoing roar of pain that would cause those within the city to cover their ears were many not still unconscious. As its scream faded, Norr turned to the city. Head still in its hands it stepped forward, its movement unnatural, like someone too weak to continue walking, but pushing on through sheer will. 

“It’s..it’s weeping,” Isti said in disbelief. 

Vencarlo responded, eyes wide in confusion and fear. “The colossi are barely sentient! It shouldn’t even be able to feel, how can it weep?” 

“Gods how should I know!” The uncharacteristic panic was clear in her voice. 

“You were specialized in warforged!”

“Fifteen gods damned years ago! That giant hell-bringing warmachine is closer to an automaton than a living being. It shouldn’t be doing any of this!”

As they spoke the colossus stepped through the city walls, the magically reinforced stone and mortar collapsing like a child’s block tower being kicked over. Step by plodding step the warforged crashed through the buildings of the city, heedless of its destruction. Its shoulders racked by sobs it approached the Rising Tower that was both nearest the wall and Cannith’s tower. Finally reaching it the colossus collapsed, its back against the tower and its arms falling limply to its sides. The shuddering wails of its weeping faded, leaving an eerie silence over the city.


End file.
